Blade '' pro Honor et Patria'' Origin ?

[francantolin]

Hello everybody,

I just bought in an auction an interesting sword: oriental ( turkish) mounts on an european old (?) straight blade.
Does someone know where it can come from ( Poland ? Romania ?) and date it ?

Thank you

Franco

(Ps: I post it too on the ethnographic forum because of the rest of the sword )

[Jim McDougall]

These are not 'Turkish' mounts, but of the popular 'orientalist' fashion of 18th century, and this seems a military pallasche type blade. The Latin is found often on Polish and Hungarian swords of these times. The velveteen scabbard suggests possible honorific pallasche of Eastern Europe or Ukraine? The pommel and grip styling seems almost Tatar, which brings to mind those regions.

[francantolin]

Hello Jim,
Thank you !!
Really useful and interesting comment !!

Kind regards

[Jim McDougall]

My pleasure, nice sword!!
As well noted on the ethnographic forum by Oliver, this does seem to be a Caucasian piece. The velveteen scabbard sort of set me toward the European angle, but the shapes of those elements in the hilt especially pommel do bring to mind Caucasian possibilities. With that, again the Tatar factor always looms.

[NeilUK]

I don't know if this will affect your considerations of this sword but there is a grammatical mistake in the Latin inscription - possibly just a slip by the engraver. It should read: PRO HONORE ET PATRIA. But looks a nice blade otherwise.
Neil

[francantolin]

Hello,
I'm not a specialist at all in Latin language,
I found this old army flag of Romania 1860 with Honor & Patria motto,
that's why I thought perhaps a romanian blade model on an ottoman hilt and scabbard ...

Kind Regards

[NeilUK]

The flag is fine and the Latin correct. The difference with the blade inscription is the word PRO which requires the ablative case of the word HONOR (sorry to be technical); PATRIA is OK being identical in nominative and ablative cases. But the motto is basically the same so could suggest a Romanian origin.
Regards, Neil

[francantolin]

Hello,
I'm still waiting the custom-authority export authorisation...they told me to wait another week... :shrug:

Waiting for the shipping, I was looking for this particular sword shape:
oriental hilt with ''snakes'' guard and straight blade on the net.

I found two wonderful swords with the ''same'' shape in two of the nine swords of the Prophet Muhammad
( now in the Topkapi Museum Istambul )
: Al-Mathur and Al-Rasub,

Do this model of particular hilt and straight blade still been made in 19th-20th century in Arabia ? ( sorry for my bad english )

[francantolin]

Hello,
I finally received the sword,
the mounts are ottomans but the blade is european,
have you ever seen this marks ?
Austrian ?
Thank you !